Russ Heath (top left) and a dynamic action scene from G.I. Joe #24 (1984) and equally dynamic action from a 1970s ad for Roman toy soldiers.
When and What He Did at Timely/Atlas/Marvel: Artist from the late 1940s through the 1950s.
Marvel-ous Accomplishments: When superheroes fell out of fashion at the end of the 1940s, comics publishers concentrated on other genres, such as science-fiction, romance, horror, westerns, and war stories.
Russ Heath excelled in these areas during the ‘50s
while still being versatile enough to draw superhero stories, too, illustrating such Marvel/Timely/Atlas titles as
War Adventures, Journey Into Unknown Worlds and Adventures Into Terror. But for Marvel readers of a certain age, Heath is best known for artfully illustrating a 1984 G.I. Joe comic that had its own TV commercial and for a beautifully rendered ad for toy Roman soldiers that was better drawn than most of the comics it appeared in.